Winning Over Uncertainty
Here’s a thing about success: it rarely comes all at once.
Instead, success comes in small increments, through a series of small wins. Most people are unaware of them. It's easy to get caught up in the pursuit of big dreams and feel sidetracked by minor setbacks.
What might be the right path is often mistaken for a detour.
A 2007 Harvard study on 238 individuals found that celebrating small wins led to increased motivation in people. Over 12,000 journal entries showed that daily progress, not major milestones, could be the difference between a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ day.
“Small wins have a transformational power.” ~Mehrnaz Bassiri.
By breaking down your bigger goals, you increase the likelihood of accomplishing so much more.
All of us experience uncertainty. None of us know how to deal with it.
But something as simple as a small win can help us make sense of uncertainty when it comes to the future.
For me, it was after graduation. My friends had gone their separate ways. So did my sister. The only thing connecting me back home was an unfaithful network signal and meandering Wi-Fi.
Life had taken an unexpected turn. Or so it felt.
So I did what everyone does when going through an early midlife crisis.
I ran a marathon.
Before then, I used to be a casual runner, sticking to just a few kilometers at my own pace. A marathon was, quite frankly, never on my agenda.
The race was segmented into three parts, each marked by a different-colored bracelet. Black for 3km, blue for 5km, and lilac for the ultimate 10km.
Secretly, I had my eyes on the lilac bracelet.
In between laps, I’d slow down and then pick up again, pushing myself to go a littler further each time I bagged a bracelet. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before: the feeling of exhilaration, complete with utter determination and exhaustion.
Later, I learned they have a name for it. The Bannister Effect.
"The Bannister Effect" (TBE) describes the shift in mindset when you break a significant barrier or overcome a difficult challenge, one that was once considered unachievable.
The best part about TBE in racing? You’re always looking ahead.
To the next lap.
To the next thing.
To the next taste of victory.
Small wins in many ways is like racing.
It lets you enjoy the little rewards along the way of accomplishing your bigger goals. Instead of getting overwhelmed by the enormity of your dreams, celebrating small victories keeps you motivated.
Joining more marathons, meeting new people, trying out new things,, and opening myself up to life’s surprises, didn’t only teach me how to be comfortable with the uncertainty of the future, but also how to lay the groundwork for the next win.
I’m no fool—a marathon is different from life. In life, you have no idea where you’re headed. A finish line is not set at a distance. It is shrouded in mystery. And that’s intolerably scary.
When you feel bumped by the weight of your ambitions, take a moment to remember:
J.K Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book on table napkins while struggling to make ends meet.
Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times before being published.
It took Thomas Edison over 1,000 attempts to find the perfect filament for the light bulb. He famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Michael Jordan was dropped from his high school team to a junior varsity team. He never looked back, and the rest is history.
Sometimes all you have is not even a win to celebrate, but a small step forward. Something to work with is better than nothing to work with. It's in those moments that you need to find the motivation to keep going even when you don’t know where you’re headed.
“Small wins are the wins that snowball into a big chunk of wins with Christmas lighting around it.”
Since the dawn of time, humans have loved creating goals and sticking to a plan.
American writer George Saunders once said, in a Darwinian sense, “It’s the instinct for survival. We don’t see or hear all that might be seen or heard but only that which is helpful for us to see and hear. Our thoughts are similarly restricted and have a similarly narrow purpose: to help the thinker thrive.”
I can name a classroom of people who are bound by this self-consuming will. A willingness to conquer uncertainty. The will that rejects uncertainty and replaces it with a fixed mindset.
A fixed mindset that further enables self-doubt and confusion, followed with questions like “Am I good enough? What if I fail? Will I ever succeed? I can’t risk losing, I need a plan.”
When things don’t go as per said plan, we are back to square one. Left defeated and hopeless.
Only if life worked that way. Even when you’re planning for something intrinsically strategic like a heist, plans may set you up for failure.
No plan is ever universal. If it were, economists would make great planners.
Plans fail to account for the universe—the recession, pandemic, mass layoffs, cultural upheavals, natural calamities, manmade wars, and strained geopolitics. Even breakups.
It’s always “Hope for the best” but also “Expect the worst.”
According to award-winning psychologist Carol Dweck, a growth mindset describes a person’s potential as unknown and unknowable.
Celebrating your wins on a road that leads apparently nowhere (as perceived by you) is likely to cultivate a growth mindset.
I always thought I knew what I wanted in life, and in relentless pursuit of it, I started losing sight of the things all around me.
“If Plan A doesn’t work out, it’s over.”
Throw in some loneliness, and I forgot what constituted a “Self” anymore. Is it the values I shared, the friends and family I loved spending time with, the wonderful outdoors, and a few guilty pleasures?
I was restricted to a suffocating worldview that had long stopped serving me. The present-me. And the future-me.
So I tried the next best thing:
My jar of wins🌻
Every day, no matter how small, I write down one thing that brings me joy. Walking my dog to the park. Baking a cookie. Going for a hike. Catching Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
It's been an effective way to shift my focus from the uncertain destination to the most certainly happening journey itself. A small practice, much like journaling, that makes positivity accessible for me. Filling my personal jar of wins, one day at a time.
I urge you to do the same.
At the end of the day, when all the noise in and around you has settled, with the thinker in you thriving, write it down and pop the note into your jar.
